2009 Reading #102: Brown Harvest
Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.
101. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman.
102. Brown Harvest by Jay Russell. The Boy Detective (you know the one) grows up, goes home, and gets a long hard look at the gritty underbelly of Anytown, U.S.A. Does for (or maybe to) juvie mysteries what Meet the Feebles did to the Muppets. Brown Harvest oscillates between a clear-eyed look at the world without childish filters, and a hyperbolic collision between kid lit and hardboiled detective stories. The cameos are at times hilarious (I'm not going to name names, but there are enough of them that more than one escaped me entirely), but sometimes feel a bit gratuitous, and there are times when the prose tries too hard to evoke Hammett or Chandler and ends up being groan-inducing. Still, anyone familiar with kidlit from the mid- to late-middle part of the 20th Century (with a suitably cynical sense of humor) will get something out of this book.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.
101. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman.
102. Brown Harvest by Jay Russell. The Boy Detective (you know the one) grows up, goes home, and gets a long hard look at the gritty underbelly of Anytown, U.S.A. Does for (or maybe to) juvie mysteries what Meet the Feebles did to the Muppets. Brown Harvest oscillates between a clear-eyed look at the world without childish filters, and a hyperbolic collision between kid lit and hardboiled detective stories. The cameos are at times hilarious (I'm not going to name names, but there are enough of them that more than one escaped me entirely), but sometimes feel a bit gratuitous, and there are times when the prose tries too hard to evoke Hammett or Chandler and ends up being groan-inducing. Still, anyone familiar with kidlit from the mid- to late-middle part of the 20th Century (with a suitably cynical sense of humor) will get something out of this book.